Cinema Papers No.122

James Cameron's keenly-anticipated, much delayed action spectacle, Titanic, has finally surfaced, so to speak. Director, writer and co-producer Cameron ingeniously gets around the problem of telling an audience a story they already know by inventing a new one. He doesn't re-write history; he embellishes it with a narrative that suits the proportions of this epic, tragic tale.

In the early hours of 15 April 1912, more than 1,500 people drowned in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, when the RMS Titanic sank during its maiden voyage.

In the present-day, a salvage team discovers a painting of a young woman wearing a lavish diamond necklace. The now-elderly woman wants the jewels recovered from the wreck before fortune hunters get to it. And so commences the recollections of how 17-year-old Rose Bukater (Kate Winslet), an upper-class woman aboard the ship, fell for a free-spirited passenger, Jack Dawson (Leonardo Dicaprio), despite being promised-in-marriage to the dull businessman, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane).

The ambitious production was filmed on the coast of Baja, Mexico and on the open sea near Halifax, Nova Scotia. Its release has been postponed several times already due to delays in production and post-production.

The wait will soon be over, and the mystery will be revealed. Not that of RMS Titanic, but that of the jewels and the forbidden, tempestuous love between out ill-fated heroes.